Best LinkedIn Practices for B2B Brands in 2019

One of the often overlooked and misunderstood platforms that B2B brands can benefit greatly from is LinkedIn. Many believe the incredibly powerful platform is simply a job search engine, but it truly offers so much more and has the capability to generate massive reach organically. In 2019, LinkedIn should be any B2B marketers go-to tool for growing a brand.

Setting up your profile:

About: You have 2000 characters to describe what you do, how you do it and why it is important.

Featured groups: You can include groups that align with your organization’s goals on your profile. This allows you to build a community around what you aim to achieve.

Call to action (CTA): LinkedIn business pages have the option to display a call to action on your page. You can select CTA’s such as “Register” or “Visit Website”.

Cover photo: Your cover photo is a good place to display a banner advertisement of your most current promotion. Whatever desired action you want a viewer to pursue can be creatively displayed as a cover photo. The optimal size is 1400 x 425 pixels.

Location: Add the address where your office is based.

Company size, industry and company type: One of the recognized pieces of data that LinkedIn has over others is that it displays your company’s size. Be sure to give your most accurate estimation of this and fill out all other relevant information.

6 types of organic content we recommend:

1. Photos & Videos

LinkedIn has become a great platform for sharing photos and videos. Try to maintain a balance of visual content that shows both your organization’s compelling story as well as the fact that it is a well-organized and managed venture.

Photos can be used to show behind the scenes. As a business, it’s important to show people behind the brand - whether it be volunteers, employees or beneficiaries, viewers want to engage with something personal. Keep this in mind and make sure to tag all of those present in the photo.

2. Graphic Designs

People often visit LinkedIn to be inspired in a professional context. Quotes, infographics and statistics shared in a branded visual are all beneficial to share on this platform.

3. LinkedIn Groups

It’s valuable to consider joining groups on LinkedIn that have aligning values. This way you can share your content in a place where the audience is already engaged in the type of message you have. Avoid being too “salesy” and look to provide more value than you ask. At the same time, you might consider creating your own LinkedIn group. Build a group around your cause and invite others to contribute.

4. Post calls to action

Whether you’re looking to connect with potential leads, gain brand exposure or hire, LinkedIn is a great place to share these types of posts. Many users on LinkedIn are looking to take action in one way or another and are engaging for more than simple pleasure. This makes it a great place to share information that pertains to what your brand does, how you do it differently and why.

5. Share helpful, third-party content

Share news written by other people or organizations that align with your brand's values. When you do this, you are able to still able to provide value to your audience consistently. A simple way to keep your digital ear to the current of industry is to setup Google Alerts. You can customize the keywords you want to be pulled from news sources, and have the most relevant articles sent your email on a scheduled basis.

6. Long-form posts & blogs

One of the unique traits of LinkedIn is that people are more willing to read. This makes it a great place to post longer written content. Only the first three lines of a long post are displayed on a user’s timeline, so be sure to have a catchy enough hook intro to incentivize them to “read more”.

The “Content Recipe”:

For LinkedIn, the ratio of content you post can be different from page to page. For B2B brands, we recommend the Rule of Thirds.

⅓ self-promotion & recognition

About one-in-three of your content should reflect the “behind-the-scenes” look into what you do, how you do it and why your organization is important. This where you can put your organizational culture on display. This can be done through a number of types of content such as video, photos, blogs, etc. Also recognized members of your organization through these types of posts.

⅓ share relevant ideas and stories

This is where sharing news stories about your organization or industry, observations, blogs and announcements comes into play.

⅓ interaction with your audience

One third of your content should focus on maintaining a two-way relationship with your audience. Provide opportunities for their feedback and look to reach your audience directly through channels such as LinkedIn groups.

Also consider posting thought-provoking questions that really make a person think and reply.

Post Frequency:

This may be subjective, but this is what we’ve found to be the most effective formula for B2B marketing success on LinkedIn.

Best Times to post on LinkedIn for B2B Brands:

The best time to post on LinkedIn is Wednesday 3 to 5 p.m.

Wednesday is the best day to post to LinkedIn.

Engagement varies per day, but Tuesday through Thursday rank best.

Friday through Monday receive the least amount of engagement.

How often you should post:

If you want your account to be effective, your goal should be to post 3-4 times per day.

Encouraging engagement, growing your following & remaining relevant:

LinkedIn’s best use is for news, entertainment and conversation. An overarching goal should be to grow the influence and reach of your organization’s voice

What is ‘Engagement’?

‘Engagement’ is when a viewer values your content enough to engage with it. These translate into “likes”, comments, or shares.

Tips:

Establish a branded hashtag so your viewers can “join the conversation” and share content containing the hashtag.

Ask short thought-provoking questions that allow others to give their opinions on a matter (of course be cautious with subjects deemed ‘touchy’).

Post images with specific calls to actions. A visual with an ask is more likely to receive a response than basic text.

Use LinkedIn “Showcase pages”. With these, LinkedIn users can follow singular Showcase Pages without following the business or their other Showcase Pages. This allows businesses to promote for and cater to the audience specific to the page.

Monitor your analytics to see what type of content does the best with your audience.

Growing your following & reach:

The amount of likes or followers you have isn’t everything, but it’s a solid indicator that your efforts are paying off. Growth rates differ based on a multitude of variants, but you should expect steady growth if you are following our recommendations. You also want to try to steadily increase the reach your posts attain.

Tips:

Consistently using relevant hashtags to your audience & industry will allow you to gain more exposure.

Be active in a number of LinkedIn groups and build online rapport with key stakeholders.

Encourage your employees, volunteers and fundraising recipients to share their experiences with your organization by tagging and including your hashtag(s).

Encourage your staff members who are on LinkedIn also update their profile to display their position at your organization.

Pin posts that are performing well organically to the top of your page

LinkedIn offers a “what people are talking about now” section in the corner of your screen. Monitor the topics that are available and when you see something that is relative, jump into the conversation! This indicator means that a lot of people are already talking about it currently.

Sponsor your most important updates.

Content creation, gathering & posting processes:

Creation/gathering content:

Use simple online visual design programs such as Canva to create a branded look for your graphic designs (ie. quotes)

Even if you don’t use it, or use it right away you can never have too much content at your disposal. Encourage all of your employees and volunteers to document the work they do and save the content. Also encourage them to share on their personal profiles and tag your organization.

Monitor your branded hashtag(s) to discover user-generated content that you can retweet,

Use a social media monitoring tool to pull content to show you the content that is most relevant to your industry.

Keep your posts short. If you have an extensive message to share your best bet might be to try video or pair your long-form post with

Use Google Alerts to have articles emailed to you to you that contain particular key words.

Posting processes:

Build a content calendar that gives you an outline to follow. Cycle through different types of content to give your viewers variety. Give yourself an idea of what you plan to post before the beginning of each posting cycle.

Have someone in charge of monitoring trending content that your organization can get involved in.

Post during each day’s optimal time.

Managing a LinkedIn account can be a handful, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be. Use scheduling programs such as Bufferto plan your content ahead of time.

2019 is the year for B2B brands to leverage LinkedIn

There is no better platform for business professionals and brands to coexist on an organic content-friendly playing field. Don’t miss your opportunity to get the most out of it before it changes (like all social media platforms eventually do). Right now, you can get away with very little pay-to-play ad sponsorship, which is required in places like Facebook.

Need an expert to help you build a B2B strategy for your brand on LinkedIn? We’ve got you covered!

No two marketing campaigns are alike. Between targeting your ideal customer, selecting distribution channels, setting KPI’s, allocating budgets, the campaign’s duration and a number of other variables, there are limitless formulas to running a digital marketing campaign.

Despite how one decides to go about executing their campaign, the building blocks of a successful one are transferable.

One of the often overlooked and misunderstood platforms that B2B brands can benefit greatly from is LinkedIn. Many believe the incredibly powerful platform is simply a job search engine, but it truly offers so much more and has the capability to generate massive reach organically. In 2019, LinkedIn should be any B2B marketers go-to tool for growing a brand.

Marketers are tasked with exploring and capitalizing on new avenues to achieve this tall order effectively. That’s why it is more important than ever to have a digital marketing strategy that works for you and can produce tangible results.

Here are 5 practices you should include in your ecommerce marketing strategy.

Without a strategic vision for video production and distribution, clients can leave the project with a bad taste in their mouths, and rightfully so. Before seeking the “what” (video production), you need to consider the “where” (distribution) and most importantly, the “why” (goal).

It can be a headache trying to manage multiple clients throughout the course of a day. Your goal should be: How can I be the most efficient, effective and organized? As an agency that has faced these hurdles first hand, we’ve decided to make your life easier and save a buck or two in the process.

Your website could be an artistic masterpiece that belongs in a digital equivalent of Le Louvre, but if you don’t maintain it, you’re hurting its potential to be seen and ultimately convert visitors into leads.

I'm not talking about the Hollywood-inspired PR you'd see on shows like Scandal - a reactive, extreme, and corrupt version. Let me show you the areas where you can effectively leverage digital PR for your brand.